2012

• Effects of Credit Scores on Consumer Payment Choice

  By Fumiko Hayashi and Joanna Stavins (RWP 12-03, February 2012)
  Anecdotally, a negative relationship between the use of debit cards and credit scores has been reported: Consumers with lower credit scores use debit cards more intensively than those with higher credit scores. However, it is not clear whether credit scores have real effects on consumer payment choice or whether the negative relationship is caused by other factors, such as education or income.

  If credit scores have real effects, a negative relationship between debit card use and credit scores could imply supply-side effects, demand-side effects, or a combination of both. If credit scores significantly influence consumer access to credit cards, credit limit, or the cost of credit cards, then the negative relationship likely results from supply-side constraints. If a lower credit score is associated with differences in underlying consumer tastes and preferences for payment methods, then the negative relationship is likely due to demand-side effects.

  In this paper, we investigate the effects of credit scores on consumer payment behavior, especially on debit and credit card use. Because we find that credit scores have real effects, we investigate what credit scores imply. Preliminary evidence strongly suggests that supply-side factors play an important role in the cost of credit and in access to credit.

• Model Uncertainty, State Uncertainty, and State-space Models

  By Yulei Luo, Jun Nie and Eric R. Young (RWP 12-02, January 2012; Revised February 2012)
  This technical paper considers ways to capture uncertainty in the context of so-called "state-space" models.

  State-space models are powerful tools commonly used in macroeconomics, international economics, and finance. State-space models can generate estimates of an underlying, ultimately unobserved variable—such as the natural rate of unemployment—based on the movements of other variables that are observed and have some relationship to the unobserved variable. The paper shows how several macroeconomic models can be mapped to the state-space framework, thus helping quantify uncertainty about the true model (model uncertainty) or about the amount of information available when decisions are made (state uncertainty).

• Model Uncertainty and Intertemporal Tax Smoothing

  By Yulei Luo, Jun Nie and Eric R. Young (RWP 12-01, January 2012; Revised April 2012)
  In this paper we examine how model uncertainty due to the preference for robustness (RB) affects optimal taxation and debt structure in the Barro tax-smoothing model (1979). We first study how the government spending shocks are absorbed in the short run by varying taxes or through debt under RB. Furthermore, we show that introducing RB can improve the model's predictions by generating (i) the observed relative volatility of the changes in tax rates to government spending and (ii) the observed comovement between government deficits and spending, and (iii) more consistent behavior of government budget deficits.